San Antonio Adult Entertainment: Dolph Briscoe, Texas governor from 1973-79, dies
June 28, 2010In 1974, he won re-election to a four-year term, the first for a Texas governor since 1873.
His second term was marked by two unsuccessful attempts to rewrite the Texas Constitution — efforts that Briscoe argued would weaken an executive branch already considered too weak by political scientists — and by passage of the landmark Texas Open Records Act, the first Texas sunshine law granting the public access to government agencies’ records.
It was also marked by the so-called Chicken Ranch affair, which forced him to order the investigation and closure of a long-running brothel in La Grange after Houston television reporter Marvin Zindler publicized its existence with the complicity of local officials. Briscoe was reluctantly drawn into the case by public outcry. The episode was later popularized in a Broadway show and movie, “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”